Gumi Cryptos Launches Fund to Back 50 Web3 Startups

On March 30, early-stage venture capital firm, Gumi Cryptos Capital (GCC), launched its second fund targeting web3 startups.

The new fund aims to back 50 start-ups during their earliest stages. Each project will be allocated between $500,000 and $5M including follow-up investments. The fund will target the DeFi, gaming, metaverse, infrastructure, and developer tooling sectors.

Investment Capital

The raise highlights the institutional appetite for early-stage web3 investments despite the selloff in the crypto markets.

Ken Seiff, the co-founder of Blockchange Ventures, said that the first quarter downtrend would be short-lived due to the scale of investment capital earmarked for crypto waiting to be deployed.

“I don’t know that a 50 or 60% drawdown… means much,” Seiff said in a podcast with The Defiant this week. “We’ve seen extraordinary capital raises and announcements of capital raises in the last sixty days. Many of the funds, including our own, that went out to raise capital in the fourth quarter or the third quarter had more demand than they could supply.”

In early March, Electric Capital raised $1B for two new funds backing web3 teams.

Last month, GCC helped launch a $205M ecosystem fund for The Graph alongside Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, and other top venture firms in the space. The fund is intended to support developers leveraging The Graph’s on-chain data services.

The firm’s first fund raised $21M in February 2018 and went on to back three dozen crypto startups, including NFT marketplace OpenSea and leading play-to-earn collective Yield Guild Games, and early-stage investments in Celsius, Astar, and 1inch. GCC’s investors include Polygon, Mistletoe Venture Partners, and Shinsei Bank — the 22nd largest bank in Japan.

According to Angel List, it has returned 24x and outperformed most rivals.